Official PA Terminology Replaces 'Terror' with 'Resistance'

PA Ministry publishes a book instructing PA Arabs to replace “the Israeli and American dissemination of poisoned terms.”

Contact Editor

Elad Benari, 20/06/12 06:14

Abbas honors dead terrorists

Reuters

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Information has published a book instructing PA Arabs which words to use and calling to replace “the Israeli and American dissemination of poisoned terms.”

The book, entitled “Terminology in Media, Culture and Politics,” includes a chart with the “poisoned terms” to be replaced. The contents of the book were exposed by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) organization, which monitors PA-based media, translates it and presents it on its website. The organization’s reports often reveal the PA’s incitement to hatred and attacks on Israel.

As PMW has documented for years, when speaking to its own people, the PA adamantly denies Israel's right to exist and glorifies the murder of Israelis and Jews, including civilians, as heroic “resistance”. The terminology guide issued by the PA reiterates the official PA positions that foreign governments and the international media often don't understand, deny, or ignore.

PMW revealed that the introduction to the PA Ministry of Information's book stresses that correct language must be chosen in order to avoid language that recognizes Israel's existence as “natural.”

PA Arabs are encouraged to use terms that indicate that Israel is the result of “a racist, colonialist endeavor,” and the book instructs Palestinians never to use the name "Israel" alone but instead to use the term "Israeli colonialism." To use "Israel" by itself is damaging, according to the PA, because to do so "describes Israel as a natural state."

A second fundamental of PA ideology is to refuse to accept that attacks that kill Israelis, including suicide bombings against civilians, are terror. Therefore, PMW exposed, the PA has chosen the following terms to replace all references to terror that Israel and the world use. In the PA book, “terror” becomes “resistance”; a PA Arab terrorist becomes a “resistance member”; suicide bombing operations become martyrdom-seeking operations; Arab violence is “legitimate resistance”; a person who was killed is a martyr (Shahid); and reciprocal violence is“resistance response”.

The PA refuses to recognize Israel's fight against PA Arab terror as self-defense and attempts, through its terminology, to delegitimize Israeli security structures and defense measures by replacing the following terms: The Israeli Minister of Defense becomes the “Israeli Minister of War”, the IDF becomes the “Israeli occupation forces”, and the separation fence becomes the “racist separation fence”.

PMW also exposed that part of the denial of Israel's right to exist includes the PA's refusal to acknowledge thousands of years of Jewish history and culture in the Land of Israel. The book includes expressions that should be used to replace Israeli terminology related to history and tradition: The Star of David is turned into “the six-pointed star”, the Western Wall becomes the Al-Buraq Wall, the Temple Mount is turned into the “Noble Sanctuary of Jerusalem”, and Judea and Samaria become “the occupied West Bank”.

PMW noted that this book issued by the PA Ministry of Information is significant because it states and confirms in an official PA document what PMW has been documenting for years: that the PA terminology that is used by PA leaders and their controlled media is significant and carefully chosen and reflects PA opinions and policy.

One non-governmental organization website was shut down last week and a second NGO is under investigation by funding agency “Save the Children UK”, after PMW exposed two Palestinian Authority NGOs that were spreading hate speech and promoting violence against Jews and Israel.